Editorial

If you look up the meaning of the term “reactionary,” you will probably get something like the following: “A reactionary is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which they believe possessed characteristics that are … absent from the contemporary status quo of a society.”

To be sure, on September 10th John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor, pushed all the thematic buttons that might be expected of a luncheon speaker invited to address the Federalist Society, long known as the ideological home of rabid advocates of the so-called ‘new sovereignty.’

Trump’s policies towards the Arab/Israeli conflict have demolished all illusions some Palestinian politicians might had about the US as an honest broker in peace negotiations that previous administrations had built. The fact is all successive American administrations since 1948 until the present have been completely pro-Zionist and anti-Palestinian.

There are reported to be some 43 million registered Democrats in the U.S. We know, however, that the Democratic Party has been having trouble translating their numbers into continuous electoral success. Why so? Part of the answer has to do with the fact that the party leaders concentrate on recruiting and satisfying a constituency of centrists.

In June of 2018 I was in Nashville, Tennessee on family business. While there I went to see Paul Simon in concert at the city’s Bridgestone Arena. As is a common practice, everyone went to the bathroom before the program started. That is where I saw the advertisement for “simulated fast paced COMBAT in the heart of DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE” posted over the urinal.